Starting today, Barnes & Noble gives you a $10 gift card when you buy $100 or more in its gift cards in a single transaction. In stores, the bonus card comes with your receipt. Online, it doesn’t arrive until it’s emailed on January 13, 2027. That one detail sums up bonus gift card season: the free money is real, and it always comes with conditions.
Over the next few weeks, a long list of restaurants and stores will run their own versions. Most follow the same script: buy a set amount in gift cards, get a smaller promotional card for yourself. The best of them are a straightforward discount on spending you’d do anyway. The worst are a coupon that expires before you remember it exists.
What follows is how these offers are built, how to price the bonus honestly, and where the real risks sit, from discounted gift cards to the scams that peak this time of year.
How the offers are usually built
The common structure is a bonus worth about 20% of what you buy: $10 for every $50, or $5 for every $25. Some retailers ask for a bigger single purchase, like Barnes & Noble’s $100 minimum, and many cap how much bonus one person can collect. Barnes & Noble’s cap is $50 in rewards per customer per day, and its promotion terms say returning the qualifying cards may forfeit the reward.
The bonus is almost never the same thing as the gift card you paid for. Restaurants in particular tend to issue a separate “bonus card” or “promotional card,” and that difference matters. The card you paid for is protected by federal gift card rules. The bonus card usually isn’t, and it comes with its own calendar.
Last season’s Outback Steakhouse offer is a typical example. Deal trackers listed a $10 bonus card for each $50 in gift cards, with the bonus valid only from January 1 to February 8, 2026. You bought in December, you could use the bonus during about five weeks in the winter, and after that it was worth nothing.
What the bonus is really worth
Here’s the clean version of the math. You pay $50 and walk away with $60 of spending power. If you use every dollar of both cards, that’s a discount of about 16.7% on what you spend at that restaurant. That’s a solid discount.
Now the realistic version. Say the $50 card goes to your brother-in-law as a gift and the $10 bonus card is yours. The bonus is only worth $10 to you if you would have eaten there anyway during its valid dates. If you’d normally go once in January and spend $40, the bonus cuts that check to $30. That’s a real saving.
If instead you go out for a meal you wouldn’t have bought, just because the card expires next week, the bonus didn’t save you money. It cost you the other $30 on the bill. A bonus that pushes you into spending you hadn’t planned is advertising, and you paid for it.
So the rule is simple: buy the bonus offer only from places you already visit, during months you already visit them. Everything else is noise, no matter how good the headline looks.
The fine print that eats the bonus
Before you buy, find the bonus terms, which are often a separate link from the gift card terms. These are the conditions that most often reduce what a bonus card is worth:
- Redemption window. Many bonus cards can’t be used until January and expire by late winter or early spring. Put both dates in your calendar the day you get the card.
- Minimum spend. Some bonus cards are really “$10 off a $25 or larger check.” That’s fine for a family dinner and annoying for a solo lunch.
- Where it works. Look for “participating locations.” Franchise-owned restaurants sometimes opt out, and bonus cards are often excluded from online ordering, delivery apps or catering.
- What it can’t pay for. Alcohol, tips, tax and other gift cards are common exclusions.
- One per visit. If you collect four bonus cards, you may need four separate visits to use them.
- How the bonus arrives. In store, you usually leave with it. Online, it may come by email weeks later, as with Barnes & Noble’s January delivery, which means checking spam folders in January.
None of this makes the offers bad. It just means a $10 bonus with three restrictions might be worth $10 to one household and zero to another.
The gift card you pay for has more protection
Federal rules that took effect in 2010 under the Credit CARD Act say a store gift card can’t expire sooner than five years after it was issued or last loaded with money. Inactivity fees are allowed only after a year without use, and no more than one fee a month. Some states go further.
Promotional cards are carved out of those protections. A card given away as part of a promotion can expire much sooner, as long as the card discloses the expiration date and that it’s promotional. That’s why the bonus card in your wallet can expire in eight weeks while the card you bought is good for years. Read the front of the bonus card, not just the receipt.
Discounted gift cards: cheaper, with more risk
The other way to get a gift card for less than face value is to buy it at a discount: warehouse clubs sell packs of restaurant cards below face value, and resale marketplaces sell unwanted cards from other people. These can beat a bonus offer on paper, but they put more risk on you.
Earlier this year, Costco told members that Synergy Restaurant Gift Cards bought between October 27, 2025 and January 26, 2026 had become invalid after Synergy World, the company that ran the multi-restaurant card program, said it would file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and end the program. Costco offered refunds to members who returned the cards, which is unusual, since it normally doesn’t refund gift cards. The lesson: a card issued by a third-party network, rather than by the restaurant itself, depends on that network staying in business.
Resale marketplaces add another risk: the card’s balance can be wrong, or someone can use it before you do. Buyer protection windows differ a lot from site to site, from weeks to months, so check how long you have to report a problem and use the card well before that window closes. A 15% discount on a card you’ll spend next summer is a gamble. On a card you’ll use this week, it’s a reasonable deal.
Gift card scams peak in the same weeks
Two kinds of scams matter here. The first is card tampering. The FTC warns that scammers can get a gift card’s number and PIN before you buy it, then drain the balance once you load it. Check that the packaging and the scratch-off strip over the PIN are intact, ask for a card kept behind the counter when the store offers that, and keep the receipt. A phone photo of the front and back of the card helps if you need to report a problem later.
The second is being asked to pay with gift cards. No legitimate business or government agency demands payment in gift cards, and the FTC’s gift card scam alerts describe the common versions: a “boss” texting you to buy cards for clients, a caller claiming you owe a fee, a robocall offering cheap service if you pay with cards. If you’ve already sent card numbers, contact the company that issued the card right away and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Before you buy: a five-point check
- You’d spend there anyway. Only buy a bonus offer from a place you visit during the bonus card’s valid dates.
- You know the bonus dates. Write down the first and last day you can use it, and set a reminder for the week before it expires.
- You’ve read the exclusions. Check minimum spend, participating locations, online ordering and alcohol.
- The issuer is the brand itself. Prefer cards issued by the restaurant or retailer over third-party networks, especially when buying at a discount.
- The card is clean. Inspect the packaging, keep the receipt and photograph the card before you hand it over as a gift.
One last habit: when you hand someone a gift card, tell them where the terms live and keep the bonus card somewhere you’ll see it in January, like clipped to the front of your wallet or saved in your phone’s wallet app if the restaurant supports it. A bonus card in a kitchen drawer is how most of these offers end up worth nothing.
